


sometimes I can not forgive (these days mercy cuts so deep)

by Marigold95



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Katara is having a Hard Time, Nightmares, Short, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24885073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marigold95/pseuds/Marigold95
Summary: "If the world was how it should be, maybe I could get some sleep"...The ice was the same.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	sometimes I can not forgive (these days mercy cuts so deep)

_The ice is the same._

_The chill in the air is the same, the smell of smoke and soot and fear is the same. The distant, muffled sound of chaos, steel on steel, knife on bone, is the same. The hide curtain pulls back into the same home. A body lay lifeless a few paces away, a familiar blue hood concealing the face, which was thrown haplessly into the dark red slush, stark against the white snow, but she already knows who it is._

_The same as before, she opens her mouth to scream but stops to look down at her hands to find they are covered with blood. A knife she had never seen before but somehow knows belongs to her, is gripped in her right palm. The crimson liquid, sticky between her fingers, stains up to her elbows. It smells of copper and brimstone, the acrid scent filling her head. She approaches the body, her heart pounding endlessly against her ribs as she kneels beside it. She carefully turns her onto her back, revealing her mother’s face, twisted in agony. A pool of blood bloomed out of her chest. It had been cut open; her heart was missing entirely. When she looks up again, she feels no sorrow. Suddenly, the snow melts into a black darkness._

.

.

.

Tears come as she flails helpless at the air, pulling violently up from red satin sheets, eyes adjusting to the moonless darkness of the room. A cold sweat forms along her body as the warm night air competes with the memory of frigid snow. Her jaw aches with tension, chest rising and falling rapidly as the nightmare dissipates but the terror does not. She feels lightheaded but cannot stop gulping down gasping breaths, she must remind herself she is alive and not swallowed up by the memory. The sensation of sticky, viscous, warmth a ghost on her hands, she dashes to the sink and scrubs her hands until real blood appears, tinting the water in the pink.

The scent of copper pieces hangs heavily in the air and she cannot tell if it comes from the sink or the fleeting sanguineous memory. Her arms ache, her hands sting.

Her heart leaps to her throat and she tries not to hit the ceiling as someone comes behind her and wordlessly turns the faucet off. She will not look at him, even as he stares down at her raw hands. Pressing behind her, he places his hands on her shoulders and she tries not to flinch. The basin is cool against her stomach, juxtaposed against the warmth of his body. She places a hand on his wrist, diluted blood staining his skin and dripping to the floor. 

_What happened?_

He doesn't need to ask. They've been through this before. 

She cannot answer. Her face bears a pensive expression, unfocused and pained. Words catch in her throat, unsaid, and thoughts fall below her heavy breathing. 

She trembles under his hands. 

_What do you need?_

She does not know.

_Let me take you back to bed._

He guides her back onto the mattress, wrapping a throw blanket around her shoulders, before pulling her into his chest. Her tensed muscles give out and she is grateful for the anchoring sensation of his hand rubbing small circles on her back. 

Her crimson stained hands come to grip his shirt, tears and blood saturating the fabric.

_I killed her; she’s gone because of me._

And he understands. Even so, he says:

_Honey, you cannot blame yourself._

But she does and he knows that better than anyone.

She needs to feel the guilt, to feel the pain. It tells her she hasn’t forgotten her.

_She did it because she loved you._

Yet that is the source of her strife, why mercy cuts too deep to bear. The pain is a silent penance she performs, the only thing she can offer her mother for her sin. Still, to hear the words spoken aloud rip open the wound for the thousandth time. 

She sobs angry tears into the crook of his neck, the weight of his grip, on her back and through her hair, and the tickle of his breath as he whispers into her ear ( _I’m so sorry. I know, my love, I know)_ , the only things tethering her to the world. 

Warmth emanates from his body, but she cannot feel it. There is a coldness in her heart, like an arctic chill across exposed flesh- biting, numbing, dangerous.

The ice is the same.


End file.
